Last week, I so liked a piece that Conservative Blogress Diva Regent Neo-neocon posted on Pajamas I printed it out. Just read it again. She really got at a phenomenon afflicting the chattering classes, often described as Palin Derangement Syndrome, but sometimes known by its more common name, “Palin-hatred”.

This rush to judgment is not the exception but rather the rule when criticizing Sarah. Palin-hatred is as old — and as persistent — as her presence on the national scene (that’s “hatred,” as distinguished from mere disagreement on issues). There have been countless explanations for it. If anything, the phenomenon is over-determined, representing a toxic brew of class warfare, misogyny, envy (much of this coming from women), and elitism.

One of the many things that so infuriates Palin-haters is that she has not adopted the proper veneer of bland sameness that most people in public life affect, a smoothness that often serves to even out idiosyncrasies of accent and regionalism. Ms. Palin refuses to do this. She sports not only a bracelet that marks her as the proud mother of a son who has been in the military, but an accent that marks her as from the far north and simultaneously as “country.”

Many people read the latter as “uneducated,” and therefore “stupid.” The assumption is that Palin doesn’t change these things — she continues to drop her “g’s” at the end of “ing” words, for example — because she cannot do so, rather than because she chooses not to do so. But that assumption may be as incorrect as so many of the other assumptions about Palin.

Those many false assumptions. Guess it’s that her detractors have a hard time understanding her appeal because, well, she’s just not the type of woman who’s supposed to succeed. She’s conservative, she loves her husband (who happens to be hot), she has a passel of children, she doesn’t read Derrida (and thankfully, probably doesn’t know who he is).

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The “Stupidest President Ever” award has to go to Obutthole. He’s eloquent with his teleprompter, but off script can’t do diddly. He makes bad decisions, but when his handlers don’t control him, he’s even worse.

I think a more to-the-point question would be: when you look at the words/views/positions of those who oppose gay acceptance, legislation, people, etc…at what point do you differentiate between thinking that they are “having their opinion” versus “being prejudiced and or bigoted” (which we agree also counts as an opinion).

Can we fault opponents of homosexuality in a similar way that we fault liberals for their worldviews? What are the differences and similarities between an anti-gay believer who believes as she does versus a liberal who believes as she does? Perhaps we want to discuss different liberals: social, economic, foreign policy liberals.

At what point can we speak about anti-gay believers in a way that is as negative as we speak about liberals on this site? At what point do we say, “it’s not hate, just difference of opinion”? What is “America-hating”? What is “gay-hating”? To what extent do the mindsets of American conservative Christians match the mindset of anti-gay Islamists? I speak of mind, not action so we can exclude the difference of violent behaviors, though violence is also an ideology. How do our American opponents of homosexuality compare with Islamic opponents of homosexuality, besides the choice of violence?

In what ways do you want to see your fellow conservatives accept gay Americans, regardless of political ideology? And what should a gay teen do if their parents plan to send them to an ex-gay camp, and the teen can’t quickly enough find financial independence or emancipation or a new place? I suppose we’d both advise him to try his best, and to work his fastest, but I specifically chose a scenario where I said “not quickly enough”. We can’t always achieve things as quick as we would like. And why should any employer or apartment owner cut him a break beacuse of his situation? They have to earn their way in like everybody else, do you agree? In that case, he has to get it or not. Which is why I’m entertaining this scenario of “not moving quickly enough”. Because it’s not the job of these other people to focus on these personal situations.